


Extent of a Blessing

by BombGirlPow



Series: Respite for the Touch Starved [1]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Gore, F/M, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 16:41:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29317290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BombGirlPow/pseuds/BombGirlPow
Summary: 'Please grant me the grace to shed tears for him.'Sothis'Please let me take away just a fraction of his pain.'Can you hear me?'Please bring him back to me.'I need you.In which a bit of Divine intervention helps chase away Dimtri's madness. Takes place right after the scene in the rain.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/My Unit | Byleth
Series: Respite for the Touch Starved [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2153475
Comments: 4
Kudos: 48





	Extent of a Blessing

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write this piece as a way of remedying the ease with which Dimitri kind of shakes off his madness and does a 180 into redemption mode. Even though I adore his character arc, I found it to be slightly jarring. Hope you enjoy what I've wrote.
> 
> Warning: a fairly graphic depictions of the Tragedy of Duscur takes place.

When he fell to his knees, the clouds overhead gasped a sigh and released their anguish in kind.

' _A sign_ ' the thought came unbidden as Byleth turned to the sky to accept Fodlan's icy fingers upon her face. She had only ever cried once in her life. She should be crying now. She wanted to, the gladness in her chest fit to burst and cut through her with even the slightest inroads made to get through to the man beneath her fingertips.

If she couldn't weep now then the world's tears would have to suffice to unravel the kink in her heart. 

Her hands trailed to his jawline, willing that her feelings show in her actions. He leaned into her touch. Another barrier broken. 

They were becoming soaked to the bone, no article of clothing nor armor safe in the torrential downpour. Bared to the elements and to each other, vulnerable. 

"It's raining." She spoke the obvious, hands making to be an anchor for him to rise. "Come. It would not do to catch our deaths out here". 

A dark puff of air escaped between his teeth, "Were it only so easy."

She ignored him, used to his dark remarks and made to help him to his feet. He followed her touch and clung like a man lost at sea.

She couldn't let a stray patrol group see their Crown Prince like this, after months of whispers that madness had taken him. Morale was already at an all time low after Rodrigue's death - seeing Dimitri like this would surely serve as a death blow to their cause. 

She knew the rain would serve them well as she led him back towards her room by hand. A posted guard might see them, but Byleth was more than aware that even the most well trained man would balk at studying them too closely with the threat of becoming drenched.

Dimitri didn't seem surprised by their destination. He didn't seem to grasp their surroundings at all, eyes trained to the floor and step thick as molasses as he shadowed her into the darkened room. His firm grasp, almost crushing and the slight murmuring beneath his breath the only thing that anchored him to their reality. 

She clicked the door softly shut behind them, and locked it for good measure. The year spent here made for easy navigation despite the gloom her eyes hadn't quite adjusted for. A well worn shirt, a perfect fitting glove, this dorm contoured to her soul like a second skin. This was the place she heard the goddess speak, the place where she slowly came alive. With Dimitri finally in hand, even in the barest of capacity, the skeleton of Garreg Mach could resume being the home she once knew it as. 

At least she prayed that it could be so. Nothing was ever so easy in this world. 

"Have a seat," she gestured towards the bed and her one lonely chair, "I'll stoke the fire and put on some-"

"No!" He snatched her hand and rooted her in place, terror edging his voice. "Please stay. Do not let go of me."

Her eyes grew large as she studied him. He seemed so out of place. A predator grown much too large, too awkward and imposing to be kept confined to a small room. His fidgeting only increased with the proximity of the walls, eyes full of white fear as he gazed into her own. Pleading. Starving. 

She swiped at the wet sop of hair clinging to her face and nodded, "alright." A whisper. An easy concession. Anything to keep him here by her side. 

Tentatively she reached up towards his shoulders. He was skittish. Still a wild animal. She didn't want to scare away the man who had to watch for a knife at his back after years slept in back alleys and open road.

"May I?" Her hands hovered over the clasps of his cloak. A strange look passed over his eyes, unused to gentle questions and gentler gestures. A single nod and the water logged mantle slapped wetly against the floor in a heavy heap. 

"I assume your armor must stay?" She asked as she shuffled out of her own soaked coat. Another nod, a thick swallow of bile down his throat. She responded in kind and led him to sit beside her on the bed, concern for it keeping dry the furthest thing from mind.

She clasped his hands with both of her own, and he held on as if they were the only things keeping his sanity. Perhaps they were. If she let go of him now, would he bolt? Would this be the last she would see of him? What would come in the morn, after this? Was the haze of madness only in momentary recession, like a shoreline affected by the tide?

He was gazing away from her, towards a darkened corner of the room, having resumed his dark muttering. He was shaking. Though from the cold or not Byleth couldn't tell. She felt no need to, and surely his cold tolerance must be greater than her own, right? Or maybe it was because she was less than human, no heart to beat within her so the cold didn't cut as it normally should. She couldn't know. 

She trailed the line of his gaze and stared into the darkness. If she were truly one with the goddess wouldn't she see the ghosts that plagued him so? Was turning back time mere minutes the only extent of power that Sothis would deign to share with her? Was it enough? Enough to save Fodlan, save her friends...was it enough to save the man shivering beside her?

"What do you see Dimitri?"

A few moments passed and she began to question if he had heard her, or if he even could at all, before he answered in a thick voice, "Glenn. He's angry that I am still here. I should be part way to Enbarr right now. I should be sharpening Areadbhar so it could soak in her blood. Cleave her head from her neck with the ease of ripping weeds from the ground."

She tightened her grasp around his hand, willing to ground him slightly more on the side of the living. 

"Is that what you want?"

"I-"his free hand swiped at his face and settled on pressing into his good eye, "The screaming never stops professor. It never stops and it has not ceased in years. How can I want for anything when my mind is drowning in their screams?" His voice cracked as he buried his face into her shoulder, free hand grasping at bedsheets for purchase. "You make it sound so easy. You and Rodrigue. To live for myself. I have no mind to make those decisions. That is what you and the others fail to grasp over and over again. It doesn't belong to me. Not anymore."

She let out a shuddering breath. She had suspected as much- had this whole time. While the others pressed and shook their heads in disgust or worry- she maintained her distance. She wanted to understand. She wanted to soothe. How can one soothe when the person they're trying to reach was buried beneath a pile of corpses? She knew of men who snapped under the weight of combat. Snapped at the loss of life. Even to her father many were unreachable. Dimitri was by far the worst of them all. 

But she needed him. Just as she always had. He was the first amongst the many, the strongest presence that made her aware that beneath the veneer of deathlike stoicism shadowing her whole life was a soul that lie waiting. He had saved her. Did he not know that he pulled her from her own quiet hell? Was she powerless to do the same for him?

She placed a hand upon his back and tucked his head in closer. Had she ever willingly embraced someone like this before? Her father had held her, albeit sparingly. And when she reunited with her students, Annette and Mercedes had crashed into her with tears in their eyes. Even Sylvain and Ingrid joined in. But this. This was her own. It was fitting that it was for him.

"Please." He pleaded, voice cracked and muffled against her collar, "please I just want it to stop."

Her eyes burned with unshed tears. She cursed the struggle to let them fall. She needed her humanity now more than she ever had and still it was difficult. 

"Please, please, please…"he trailed off into a mantra, hand curling and digging desperately onto her shirt. 

'Please.' Her thoughts mirrored his voice as she turned her face towards the ceiling, towards the heavens beyond.

' _Please grant me the grace to shed tears for him_.'

Sothis

' _Please let me take away just a fraction of his pain_.'

Can you hear me?

' _Please bring him back to me_.'

I need you.

_

Her sharp gasp cut through the darkness of the night. He couldn't help but freeze at the sudden sound. He had jumped at far less in the past. 

The screams stopped. The silence akin to the finality of knife slicing into throat. He pulled back and snapped his attention to her face. 

"Profess-"

The boundless green of her eyes met his own, piercing through the gloom. Enveloping everything, a deep chasm to fall into. Had she ever stared at him quite like this? Her gaze was often unsettling but this was...this was...

This was not human. 

Simultaneously the greatest of terrors and elations pierced him all at once, incinerating him in an inferno. All thoughts burned away. All awareness of self fragmenting into dust. Only this fear. Only this joy. Only…

Darkness.

Darkness to lose himself in. 

The sweet embrace he had been praying for in between the screams. His greatest wish had finally been granted. 

But. Shouldn't he be numb? Should he be feeling this heat, licking at his heels and enveloping his body? 

He should be here. After everything, he deserved to burn. 

It wasn't quite like that though. It wasn't the agony he needed to suffer. 

A heavy weight bore down upon his chest. He needed to breathe but the weight choked and stifled him. Did one need to breathe in the Eternal Flames?

He placed his arms against the weight and pushed with what little strength remained to him. What a foreign feeling to struggle with something that came so cursedly natural to him.

A sick thud rewarded his efforts, and as he turned his head to peer at the object that had imprisoned him, the dead eyes of Glenn met his own. 

A scream tore from his throat as he flung himself backwards, tripping upon countless charred bodies of those who had died in the wake of an explosion. 

He couldn't help but empty the contents of his stomach when the smell of burning flesh assailed him.

Searing pain cut through his senses as he attempted to lift himself once more, dry heaving air. He looked down to his hands. Far smaller than her remembered. Young. Too young. Too weak. They oozed with blisters, furious burns snaking their way up wrists. 

"D..mitri you...you're…" a squelching breath choked over fluids filling lungs. His eyes snapped to Glenn's again, body intersected perfectly down the middle - one side unscathed, the other a mass of blood and burnt meat. He was...still alive? Horror flooded him, as he scrambled on hands and knees over blood and gore to reach his friend's side. 

Nothing else came except for ragged breaths and eyes burning with fear - the one on the burnt side unencumbered by missing eyelid. He could see bone exposed, could see organ, could see his friend's life leaving his eyes with every struggled gasp for air. 

He didn't know how long he stayed by his side, crushing Glenn's hand beneath his own as he prayed. All sound and acrid smell of smoke lost to him as he listened to Glenn struggle for air. 

' _Please, please, please_ …'

Goddess help me.

"Glenn, h-hold on. E-everything will be okay."

It's too late for 'okay' you utter fool.

"You... you can't die Glenn."

This is worse than death. Do you not see his suffering?

"I'm...please, Glenn, hold on!"

Must he suffer your pathetic sniveling too?

He was gone. Eyes rolled back and jaw locked open in eternal agony.

It was as if all at once the gravity of the situation slammed into him when Glenn choked on his last breath. 

He was in Duscur. They were returning home. Negotiations had gone well his father had said. Everything had gone to plan, he said. Father was…where was father?

His eyes stung as he frantically scanned his surroundings. Plumes of oily smoke choked and obscured like fog, curling about furious licks of flame that split the sky in rage. The sounds of agony, of writhing, of wailing lessening with every moment, lives going out one by one with the ease of blowing out a candle. 

' ** _You must leave this place_**.'

"Father!" He bellowed into the ash. "Father help!" His hands still clung to the young knight's lifeless body, mind scraping desperately for purchase of reality. 

More screams. More sobbing, choking, and…

"FATHER!"

' ** _You cannot stay here_**.'

Some rational part of his mind must be urging him on. He needed to go. He needed to find father. Father was the strongest man he knew. If anyone could help- if anyone could fix this mess this carnage thisslaught-

He bolted, chest heaving against smoke and dread. Feet struggled to find purchase with every lope and bound, slipping and sinking into blood caked earth. 

' _These men...right here_ ' his mind screeched to a halt before his feet did. His father's honor guard.

These men did not get hit by a series of Fire spells and Bolganone. 

These men were butchered. 

Slaughtered like mere livestock.

He froze. 

What was designed to never see the light of day spilled out from their bellies, a writhing mass of snakes and bile. Throats torn in ragged smiles, unnatural bends to arm and leg whether attached or severed. 

This was the quietest part of the whole field. This was…

"FATHER!"

The royal wheelhouse was toppled over, a tuft of gold hidden askew near the other side of it's base. 

Someone must had knocked his father out while he tried to help Step Mother. 

Dimitri ran to wake him up. 

' ** _You need to let go of this child_**.'

He stopped in his tracks. Was that him? How can a thought in his mind echo so loudly? How could it press into his skull so tightly that it permeated through? Was he going mad? 

The hairs on the back of his neck rose as he wildly looked around. 

Were the attackers still here? 

He pressed himself closer to the ground to make himself less of a target and crawled tentatively to the side of the carriage.

He needed to get to his father. He would be safe if he could only…

He reached down to shake his father awake. 

Lambert's head rolled uselessly away.

It couldn't be registered. It wasn't happening. Where-

He froze. His father's bloodshot eyes gazed back at him. 

Invisible tethers rooted him to the spot and snaked their way around his heart as he sat transfixed on the impossibility before him. He reached out shakily, fingertips grazing the face he had idolized his entire life.

"...father?"

Blood curdling howl cut through his eardrums, forcing him to rip his hands away to cover them.

"YOU!" His father's head bellowed, blood gushing from between teeth, "you didn't die with the rest of us! You didn't die like you were supposed to!"

Dimtri tried to scuffle away, body refusing to find purchase against the blood slicked ground.

"You need to kill them! Kill them all Dimitri! Cut their throats and bathe in their blood! Rip out their eyes and feed them their innards! You will never be free of this! You will always feel our agony! OUR BURNING FLESH WILL FLAY OPEN YOUR MIND UNTIL YOU KILL THEM ALL! AVENGE US! **KILL THEM KILLTHEMKILLTHEMKILL** -"

A chorus of screams echoed the King's command as the bodies around him thrashed to life. Their hands reached out, clawing at his singed clothes and face, demanding expiation.

Screaming for HER head. 

' ** _Enough_** '

The world cut out and fractured into billions of crystallized shards, his mind shattering along with it. Consciousness fading to a pinpoint of effervescent and inverted hues of whites and purples. Beyond dreaming. Beyond understanding. Beyond death. 

Any sense of self was bound to be annihilated if it went on any further. 

And then...

A field. The same field he had been standing in moments before. Only...only different. 

Gone was the smoke and blood. The chorus of screams. The bodies. His father and Glenn. As if it had never happened at all. A dusting of exotic flowers rose up to meet him, prideful in their conquest against this place of death. 

Didn't Dedue often say that Duscur had the loveliest of flowers?

He raised a hand to his face. Why were there tears falling from his eyes?

"You're a terribly stubborn child, you know that right?"

He turned to his side to look upon the figure that stood abreast of him. 

It was like staring into an open flame. Shades of gold and green undulating about a clearly female form, skewing any mental foothold to clearly discern her features. Face shifting between woman and child, familiar and foreign, terror and awe. 

"To gaze upon the Beginning and see with eyes unclouded would surely break you apart Son of Blaiddyd. Fret not, this is to be expected, child."

"...child?"

He glanced at his hands, textured and scarred from decade old burns. When had they grown so large?

"Yes. Well, all you mortals may as well be children to me. To her. To we." The figure tilted her head and rested it upon her fist, prompting a heady sense of deja vu. Where had he seen that before?

"In any case, I demand that you forgive yourself." 

"I-...what do you mean?"

Even without a discernible face, the figure was able to pull off an air of exasperation. 

"We truly chose the densest of them all did we not? But I suppose your heart was always in the right place, even if it kills you, or drives you mad."

A warm breeze swept past them and made the flowers shiver as with laughter, their intoxicating perfume caressing his sense of smell in a waft of nostalgia. It smelled like...someone dear to him.

"She's waiting for you, you know. You must forgive her tardiness as well. She's always had trouble waking on time. As have I. As have we."

He frowned, unable to grasp the nonsense this creature was spewing.

"You speak in riddles and yet you chastise me for lack of understanding?"

"Your lack of understanding is boundless and shall remain ever so as compared to our own - but I digress," she turned to him fully, command slipping into her voice, "you must not visit that place anymore in waking moments. You must let go of it, and you must resume living the way you mortals are meant to. Do you not hear them suffering? Your nation's people in the land of the living?"

His face scrunched up as her meaning hit him. "How can I...after everything…" his voice choked on the rest.

A calm understanding shifted through the air and permeated his bones "The tragedy was caused by people who's machinations have killed the world once. It was never supposed to happen again." The figure gazed out over the rich Duscurian fields, a land that did not quite belong to her but sang of her praises anyways, "I wasn't there to stop them. And for that dear child," she cupped both of his hands in her own, "you have the apologies of a goddess."

Goddess is what the figment called herself. And somehow he knew it before she spoke it aloud. What she is sings through his flesh and beats steady in his in his heart like a drum. It was like time itself uttering all of the world's past and it's entire future with a single word.

He fell to his knees. His tears came with shuttering gasps. How could she tear the hole in his heart even wider with an intent to mend it? With an apology he didn't think he was fit to receive?

"I need you to help me. Help her. Help we. I need you to help set it right."

"And for that Son of Blaiddyd, you must forgive yourself of an event that was never meant to happen at all."

A shaking hand covered his mouth as he doubled over in grief. In fealty. Anything. Anything to make it stop. Anything to set it right. He couldn't...he couldn't just-

"I will help you. As you told me earlier it is an easier said thing than done for men such as yourself. I've no desire to be so cruel as to leave gaping wounds exposed to the elements and yet demand of them to shut upon their own accord."

She paused and raised a pensive finger to what was supposed to be her face.

"From henceforth the screaming will stop. The dark visages of your loved ones will cease their haunts while you wake. Eye will lighten with clarity. You will have moments of respite." Her small hands ran gently through his golden locks, the same hue as his father's, "but I will not fully take from that which is yours."

"You will still remember, and sometimes dream. And at times you will still hear them, albeit in subdued whispers. For you have committed many a grave sin and must repent upon your actions."

He let out an anguished rasp of air, guilt coiling thickly in the base of his gut. He was a monster. A demon that deserved to suffer as much as what he had reaped upon-

"It matters not what you think you deserve, only that which I gift and that which I taketh away." Her voice rang out childlike and as old as history itself. "I told you before that you'll never grasp understanding. You must take what I grant you and be the pillar of the people. Be her pillar. She cannot do it without you. We cannot."

"She?" 

"Yes." The figure replied simply, as he had somehow always known her to do. 

The thing that called itself goddess kneeled before him and cupped the place where his chest housed his heart.

"She loves you, you know." She whispered tenderly, gently. "We. I love you. We don't know it yet, she's never felt what it is like to be in love. She does not know what to call the thing she feels. But it is for you and for you alone."

He shuddered beneath her fingers, warmth enveloping his soul in a terrifying way.

"Do you accept my gift child?"

He blinked his tears away and nodded brusquely, "yes". A whisper. A promise. 

The goddess rose to her full height. Bigger than the world, grander than the perceived universe.

"Then awaken, Son of Blaiddyd."

_

It was to the light of daybreak that he awoke. Body ached as always from the hardness and awkward angles that his suit allotted while in prone position, but all the same, his mind felt blessedly rested in a way he hadn't felt in a decade's worth of time. 

At first, the softness beneath his armor confused him, as did the rest of his surroundings. When was the last time he had completely abandoned his awareness as he slumbered?

Would have to be when he lost his eye and drifted for a week or so in hazed fever.

He shuddered at the memory, then snapped to attention at the sudden silence. There was nothing. If not screams, then the morning should've greeted him with hoarse whispers, condemnations, agonized whimpering. That was how it always went. That's how it went on for years. 

Instead, a sniffle and the whispered sounds of sheets greeted him. He trailed his eye to the side of his body and spotted her. 

The professor lay curled in a ball against him, sun rays filtering golden patterns across skin as she mumbled something in her sleep. Her mint hair fanned out messily, tickling the side of his jaw. 

A rush of heat furiously assaulted his cheeks as his mind stalled over what he had once only relegated to his dreams. When did-?

And then it hit him. The night before. Their conversation and the rain. That would explain the dampness of the bedding - her bedding. And after that…

He couldn't recall. 

"M'mitri?" She mumbled as she shifted awake. Eyelids sleepily opened as she turned to face him. 

His heart swelled at the sight. 

"I...professor. I did not mean to...I'm sorry I must have lost my senses last night."

She considered him closely as she lifted herself upon elbow, hair framing her face in tangled disarray.

Had she ever been as beautiful as she appeared to him now in this moment?

"Did you sleep well?"

The way she ignored his stammering and asked such a casual question brought him back to his senses. "I…yes. Very well." He shuffled awkwardly, attempting to rise and place some respectable distance between them. "Possibly the best sleep I have had in years."

Byleth answered with a yawn and stretched, "good, I'm glad. I had a really nice dream."

"Yes?" He asked with sincere curiosity. He couldn't understand why but he felt like he was missing something. The fog of which edged at his mind like the memory of a word caught on the tip of his tongue.

She hummed, "yes," and considered her words before continuing, "there was a field of flowers. I don't remember much else." 

For just the briefest of moments, the waft of floral perfume enveloped his senses before dissipating completely. Something continued to escape the grasp of his consciousness like fine sand running through fingers.

Byleth continued to peer at him expectantly, though for what he couldn't say for sure. He cleared his throat and looked away abashedly. He needed to get this off his chest. Even though he still wanted to meet Edelgard on the battlefield, put an end to her violent reign of terror, something within his heart seemed to have loosened and opened his eyes to the madness of his previous fervor. Shame pooled in his core as he forced himself to look at her. She deserved as much. 

"I'm…I cannot even begin to apologize to you. I have no words. For everything that I've put you through. Put all of you through."

"Dimitri?" Her eyes grew large at his words.

"You should've never wasted so much time on me. Not only have these hands been bloodied in countless acts of violence, but every life lost in our battles against the Empire...from all my bad strategic calls...they are all my doing."

She let out a shaky breath and looked down towards her hands. Of course she would look alway. The sight of him ought to sicken her. 

"I want to tell you now...I am not going to Enbarr. I will stay here, and do what little I can to repent for my mistakes. If you would still have me, then I want nothing more than to lend you my strength." His words came out with a rasp, emotions he could'nt quite swallow down. It would never be enough. He could never repay the kindness she offered that he had so cruelly discarded. 

A quiet gasp stole from her breast as she took his hands into her own. When she lifted her eyes to meet his own, a single tear trailed it's way down to her jawline. Joy the likes he had never seen radiated from her, a gentle smile adorning her face. A second dawn meeting his eyes, so mesmerizing was her visage. 

"I'm so happy." She choked, "That you'll stay here with me."

And then she embraced him. And he couldn't help but lose himself again to a whole different kind madness.

_

Dimitri left her dorm after moments more of hushed talking. It was mostly him fumbling over more useless apologies, and her waving them off as if they weren't needed. She was too much. Her kindness, their close proximity. All far too much and undeserved. 

As he clicked the door softly shut behind him the new day's light shown down upon his face. The storm of yesterday gone without a trace. A new beginning. 

He let out a shaky breath before setting off. Now for the others. This would be far less easy, but it was something he needed to face. He could only hope that they would accept what little he could offer. 

As he descended the steps he spotted a flash of movement from the corner of his eye. 

"Oh. Good morning Dimitri." A gentle voice rang out from across the way. Mercedes beamed up at him with a stacked basket of laundry in both of her hands, unperturbed by his presence, "do you have any laundry you would like me to do as well? It's no trouble at all."

A slight flush warmed his face as her sudden appearance sunk in. Had she seen him exit the professor's room?

"Um...no...no that would not be necessary."

She continued smile in that placid way of hers, as if waiting for him to continue.

He cleared his throat nervously. Perhaps now would be the time to start. "Would you...do you need a hand with that?"

"Oh that would be most welcome, thank you."

**Author's Note:**

> And there it is. Let me know if there are corrections to be made, if anyone is OOC, or perhaps if the pacing is off. I'm fairly rusty and sometimes struggle with that aspect of writing. Let me know if you enjoyed it, I wouldn't mind following up with companion pieces to this one.


End file.
